I am now as old as my father was when he passed away. He fell a few years short of living as long as his father, which shouldn't have happened, but did because of his wholesale disregard for his health.
I was certainly bummed when my cardiologist told me that the heart attack I had on June 6th was "substantial." By all medical measures I've recovered nicely, and the three stents that were inserted and the medicine I take are doing their "thing."
I am always superimposing the historical events that have occurred within a person's life. I think off all the things that happened in the country and the world within the brackets of their years.
When my father started to become sick in 1985 and I was filling out the claim forms, I was very conscious of writing his year of birth, 1915. How long ago 1915 seemed from 1985. The Great Depression, WWII, space flights, Civil Rights demonstrations, Vietnam, landing on the moon, dawn of the computer age—all the events that happened within 1915 and the year of his passing, 1987.
When JFK was inaugurated in 1961 I remember my father feeling a certain contemporary kinship with Kennedy. Jack was born in 1917, and was the youngest person to become elected president. He was two years younger than my father. You'd have to feel you were contemporaries. You remember the same events, the same presidents.
And now, when I tell the pharmacy clerk my birth date, or write it, I'm very conscious that 1949 was a long time ago. I was born when Harry Truman was president, and we had the television on when Elvis's gyrating hips were censored from appearing as he appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. Contrast that era with a Super Bowl halftime show that showed us Janet Jackson's left breast (okay, unplanned by the network, but not by Janet) and you know that as long as you live you will never see everything. Can you top this? You betcha. Just pick up yesterday's paper. How many impeachments have there been?
Billy Joel is not writing songs anymore. He performs, but doesn't create new material. He doesn't really need to create new material, he has so much to lean back on. But when I hear the rapid fire of the events he races through in 'We Didn't Start the Fire' I know I remember all of them.
Billy Joel wrote that song in 1989, forty years after his and my birth in 1949. He could easily update it, or add to it, but chooses not to. He doesn't have to, of course, The events he could add keep happening, whether they're set to lyrics or not.
Each added year gets me closer to what I call "lapping the calendar," becoming 100 years old. The likelihood of achieving 100 when 72 is outlined in a mortality table, and isn't particularly high. But we know, the closer you get, the more likely it is you will get there.
So when I superimpose the events of 1949 onward I of course get all that Billy Joel sang about, all that I can remember from my growing up, and compare them to the events from 1915-1987. They of course are not the same. But they are what I remember.
One of my birthday well-wishers said when we reach a certain plateau we should get do-overs. I sometimes play the game of "what would I do different?" There are plenty of answers to that depending on who you ask, and at what point you ask them.
Right now I would say I should have bought Microsoft and Tesla stocks. And held them. It only counts when you've held them, not cash them in once you've made say $10,000.
Other than that, I am quite happy. I've gotten quite used to missing out in the market. I have absolutely no FOMO.
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